Gardening: what to do in July

Written By Ambra Edwards | 18 June 2015

Make sure you’re ready for July in the garden with our round-up of gardening tips and advice, plus great outdoor events.

Garden jobs for July:

1. Feed bedding plants once a week with high-potash tomato feed, and dead-head them regularly to keep the flowers coming. 2. Cut off spent flowerheads and tatty leaves from geraniums, delphiniums and lupins, give them a good feed, and you’ll get a second flush of flowers. 3. Clear blanket weed from ponds and water features, topping them up if necessary. A spray attachment on the hose will introduce more oxygen into the water.4. Head off disease and help tomatoes ripen by giving them light and air, stripping out the leaves from under the first truss, removing yellowing leaves, and pinching out the side shoots on single-stemmed varieties. 5. Have a thorough weed. If you haven’t time, at least snap off the flowers so they don’t get the chance to spread their seed.

Take some time off:Learn all about herbs from a medical herbalist at the National Trust’s East Riddlesden Hall, West Yorkshire, 1 JulyVisit Hampton Court Palace RHS Flower Show, 30 June to 5 JulyTake a trip to RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, near Knutsford, Cheshire, 22-26 July

Plant of the month: Rose ‘Olivia Rose Austin’
Rose supremo David Austin has a feeling this new rose, introduced at Chelsea last year and named after his grand-daughter, is the best he has bred to date – a soft pure pink, with a rich, fruity fragrance, and robustly resistant to disease. Only 90cm high, it makes a charming, neat border rose.